Accurately reproducing color on a television display has been a very important problem for television (TV) manufactures. The objective for accurate color reproduction is to reproduce exactly the same colors on the TV display as those colors are perceived by humans in the real world. However, reproducing accurate color is extremely difficult since most input and output devices currently use device dependent color spaces (e.g., RGB and YUV) to represent colors.
In attempt to accurately reproduce color, the television industry has defined color standards so that if both the input device and output device comply with the same standard, accurate color could be reproduced. The color standards make the color reproduction easier, but still, it is difficult and expensive to completely comply with the color standard.
The traditional CRT television which uses phosphors is more conducive to compliance with the color standard, while newer display (e.g., LCD, DLP, PDP) are less so. Usually, for a high end TV display, a professional color calibration is needed to achieve better color reproduction.
After a television is manufactured, the three primary colors are fixed. However, some other parameters can be adjusted for color correction, for example, the black level (offset) and the white level (gain) of each primary color can be adjusted.
Typically, the calibration professionals use so called gray scale tracking to adjust such parameters with the help of expensive instruments that can measure light chromaticity and correlated color temperature. Customers who buy a high-end display need to expend additional funds to have the display calibrated for best possible video quality from the display.